Overall description: Alpine Installation from a official disc/iso downloaded to a real hard disk by the usage of VirtualBox machine as the real machine, where will be single OS only.

This document will guide you to install Alpine into a real hard disk device but through the VirtualBox virtual machine acting as real machine, use if want to install to a real hard disk device externally but no way to boot it so can use in VirtualBox virtual machine . For others ways to install see at the Alpine_newbie_install_manual

Terminology

Host machine: will be your real machine with installed operating system that have installed the VirtualBox software and "will host" the target operating system, in that case Alpine.

Guest machine: will be your target machine where Alpine will be installed, emulated by the host operating system using the VirtualBox software installed in the real machine.

Reserved RAM: will be the amount of RAM that will be need to share exclusively to the virtual machine created by the VirtualBox software in the host machine, stolen from the real RAM.

External disc: will be the storage medium device attached as target for the emulated machine or "guest machine", where the Alpine will be installed.

Requirements

In the host machine we need installed the virtualbox program from VirtualBox software

In the host machine we need at least 1Gb of RAM, recommended 2Gb of RAM installed

The guest machine need 512Mb RAM, but recommended 1Gb reserved if desktop software will be installed

In the host machine we need installed wget or a web browser to download install medium

Preparing the medium origin to install

Download the source medium to install and put into your home, there's more hardware medium sources to download, like the s390x and ppc64le, but due VirtualBox only emulates x86, x64 and arm hardware only, will list those here.

The source medium to install will be as following format: http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v<VERSION>/releases/<ARCH>/alpine-netboot-<VERSION>.0-<ARCH>.iso where ARCH and VERSION could be the following for VirtualBox virtual machines:

<ARCH> will be

x86: The popular i386/i686 compatible 32-bit x86 based machines, i386 recommended for olders.

x86_64: The popular AMD64 compatible 64-bit x86 based machines, recommended for newer/lasted hardware.

<VERSION> will be

latest-stable for a more up to date without taking care of numbered

3.10 the most recommended for machines between 2016 to 2018

So using 3.10 version and i386 flavor the available links to download will be:

Graphical download: Just point the web browser to that url and the download of the iso file will start. A file with .iso extension type, with name like "alpine-standard-3.10.0-x86_64.iso" will be downloaded commonly into the Download directory of your home documents filesystem.

Command line method: in unix-like terminal execute: wget -c -t8 --no-check-certificate http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/releases/x86/alpine-standard-3.10.0-x86.iso, and where you run the command, in that place/dir will be downloaded the file.

Preparing the medium target to install

Please take care of your attached devices.. for best care results only use those involved in the process, so only put the disc (that can be a USB flash, MMC card or external drive) attached, and remove all others that will no to be use. We will assume only one internal disc (that obviously cannot be removed) and one external disk attached.

The external disc will be detected and the operating system will create a new device representation, such like /dev/sdb commonly. In Linux systems you an detect the recently attached disk with following command:

/bin/dmesg | tail -n 50| grep 'Attached SCSI' | cut -d' ' -f4

This will output [sde] for our example installation. Caution due that previously command only will work if you recently attached the new external disk where the system will be installed.

Later with the detection of the disk, create the representation for the VirtualBox virtual machine, the detection will be put in /dev/ parameter.. so if the disk was detect as [sde] you must use it without "["/"]" sings, the command for creating the virtual disk will be:

A file open dialog will open.. search to the downloaded iso of Alpine and select it

Once defined the iso file to boot, push on the "Ok" button and virtual machines are finished.

Push on the green arrow that said "Start" to start the virtual machine and boot up the iso

Booting the Alpine ISO disc

When the machine start, you must be sure to choose the Optical drive (commonly named CD/DVD Rom drive), so the disc/iso will boot and after a while a command line shell will show you:

Tip: If your system are not configure to boot from a CD/DVD drive must be configure in the BIOS, ask to your vendor or technical support, VirtualBox need to hit the F12 key to choose boot medium

The setup install process

After boot up.. a command line shell of a complete ready to use Alpine will show you

At the login: to appear, type root and press enter.

Run the setup-alpine script

Choose your keyboard layout. If you don't know your keyboard layout choose us. By example for most Latin American a es are enough, for Russian (an maybe Cirilyc ones) ru are enough.

Host name, which will be the name of your computer, a good format are pcv-alp32-virtual1 where "pcv means "PC virtual", "alp32" means "Alpine 32bit" and "virtual1" means the first virtual machine to try.

Choose your network card, most people can just go with the default (press enter), take in consideration that Wired connections are more stable and faster rather than Wireless connections, also at the most modern the Wireless card, the lest supported or still not well tested.

Most people will use DHCP, so press enter again, if you have Internet connection fro ISP most settings are just DHCP so all will be configured automatically

You will be asked if you want to do any manual network configuration, press enter for no

Type in your root password twice.

Choose a time zone, you can get a list by pressing ?. If you want a sub zone, e.g. Africa, type in Africa and press enter, if again you type ? and enter, it will give you a list of sub zones in Africa. By example for Venezuela the zone are "America/Caracas" .

Press f to choose the fastest mirror; those mirrors something for strange reason are not available in some countries. (WIP put here a good mirror that never fail)

Choose an SSH server, this allows you to remotely manage your machine. OpenSSH is what the big distro's use, Dropbear is a tiny SSH replacement. Choose openssh for able to connect using command line from Unix-like systems.

Choose an NTP client, this keeps your machine's time accurate using an Internet time server. Openntpd is what the big distro's use, while Chrony is a tiny replacement.

Choose a disk you want to install Alpine onto, as an example, sda is the first disk in your computer.

Now choose how you would like to use it, for this guide, choose sys, this will install the entire OS onto your hard drive

You are given a final chance to back out, type in Y to continue

The installation is now complete and you will be asked to reboot. Type in poweroff and press enter

After install the system emulated will turn off (virtual machine will goes down and close the window), now you can remove the external disk and use it in another machine (by puting into the target machine as first internal disk), or just always use the VirtualBox virtual machine with that disk.

Finishing the installation

If you try to start that installation maybe you cannot see a graphical window system? take easy and get calm down.. in Alpine all are made by the right way.. so if user need a desktop.. user can install a desktop follow the next: Alpine newbie apk packages or bypass and go directly to Alpine newbie desktops